According to the report, which analyzed water-district data and groundwater records to calculate the economic impact of lost water, Central Valley farms will be short 6.5 million acre-feet of surface water this growing season. (Consider an acre-foot the amount of water a lawn-growing suburban household uses in a year.)

Farmers are replacing 5 million acre-feet of that missing water with groundwater they pump. But a shortfall of 1.5 million acre-feet still translates into some big numbers: a loss of $1.2 billion in income for Central Valley farmers, as well as 14,500 full-time and seasonal jobs — almost twice the number of jobs lost during the 2009 drought.

“The crops least affected are the perennial ones because they’re kept for other years,” says co-author Richard Howitt. ”The big impacts are to grain crops, a great deal to pasture, a little to corn and alfalfa.”

In fact, the report only tracks crop losses, and not the dairy farmers and beef ranchers who are being forced to buy expensive hay to replace the lost feed crops. Once Howitt tallies those figures in for a subsequent study he’s working on, that $1.2 billion figure will grow much higher.

What’s even more evident from this report is that the Central Valley is betting the farm–literally–that the state’s groundwater will soon be replenished, say from an El Niño year. If that doesn’t materialize this winter, the state is in for some very dark times.